Reeder 2: Call It a Comeback

When something works, don’t touch anything. When a software just works, it’s still possible to make it work better. I think this is the rule that Silvio Rizzi followed when thinking about the new version of Reeder, the feeds reader application I reviewed some months ago, calling it the best RSS reader for iPhone. Reeder 1.x was a great application, but as time went by it started to fall under the pressure of the features new applications such as MobileRSS, Newsprint or Newsrack introduced, and as consequence to this people started complaining about Reeder and Silvio not caring much about it anymore.

They were so wrong. Silvio has been working hard on the just-released 2.0 version, a free update for previous Reeder users that introduces some new functionalitites, and a lot of tweaks under the hood that make Reeder feel completely new, and fresh again.

You can call this a comeback.

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The War in Afghanistan, As Seen From an iPhone

Link

“Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder not only documents the war in Afghanistan with traditional digital cameras, he also used an iPhone camera, carried in his flak jacket pocket, coupled with a Polaroid film filter application to photograph the daily lives of Marines, Afghan soldiers and fellow journalists during the military offensive in Marjah, Afghanistan.”

I’m pretty sure the application is Hipstamatic.

New Apple Patent Shows Smart Drag & Drop for Upcoming OS X

Beingmanan.com has spotted a new patent filled by Apple, which focuses on the interaction between the user and the file system via drag & drop.

According to this patent Apple is working on a “smart drag & drop” solution, which should enable us to sort documents into folders basing on the file types, rather than manually organize them. Pretty much like those folders actions that already let you automatically move a file into a specific folder, but built in in the OS.

To me, it sounds great. I expect this exact kind of things from 10.7, revamped and brand new user interactions.

Explicit Apps Are Back in the App Store - Almost [UPDATED]

Remember when Apple removed all the “explicit content apps” from the App Store? Well, Apple is getting ready to put them back in. By visiting these two URLs (here and here) seems like the categories are ready, are there’s one for the iPad as well.

The categories are currently empty, and I suppose it’s because they’re not actually ready yet. I think it’s just another technical error by some engineer at Apple.

Here are the screenshots.

Again, who’s gonna be fired for this?

[UPDATE]

The links are no longer working. Apple fixed the error, but in my opinion we’ll see the explicit apps coming back very soon.

Nambu 2.0 Beta Goes Public. Reviewed.

Loren Brichter is working on Tweetie 2 for Mac, but it’s not that every developer out there is sitting at his desk waiting for the Atebits guy to ship his newest creation. Absolutely not, as almost a new Twitter client is released every day (yeah, according to Wikipedia) and guess what - a good 95% is pure shit. But fortunately, every once in a while a good client comes along and tries to persuade Mac users to stop using Tweetie 1.x, and approach a new experience.

Nambu for Mac has been around for a while now, but some weeks ago I heard that there was a 2.0 version floating around, and it was a closed beta. I got accepted into the private testing group and had the chance to try the app. Today Nambu has decided to open the gates of the beta version, which is now available for download for everyone.

Here are my impressions so far.

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Propane Brings Campfire to Your Mac Desktop

As you may have read, we’ve started using Basecamp and Backpack from 37signals as our productivity tools of choice to manage the projects inside MacStories. We’ve also paired them with some 3rd party tools suck as Spootnik and Headquarters to further enhance our workflow, and we’re very happy with them - we think we’ve found the best way to keep us organized and access our tasks from anywhere, be it the desktop, web or iPhone.

The other 37signals product, Campfire, was too much tempting to not give it a try, and so I decided to create an account and see whether  it could come in handy. Sure it did, but combined with a Mac app called Propane.

Read on to find out why.

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Ideawell, For Ideas worth Saving

Great ideas often come at the worst times. I’m always either in the shower (insert mental picture here), in line at Bojangles, or in some other awkward position that prevents me from jotting down my latest iteration of the Kitty Cannon 5000. And by the time I get home or near the most reasonable napkin wad I can write on, I often forget the specific details that made it such a brilliant idea. So with a stroke of a red pen, the idea is quickly axed and yet again, I add yet another snotty tissue to my assortment of good ideas gone missing.

Luckily, Ideawell is here to help.

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